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Root canal complications force Solange to scrap Outkast festival gig

By:
WENN.com
Sep 25, 2014

Dental issues have forced Solange Knowles to pull out of her planned performance at Outkast's ATLast festival in Atlanta, Georgia this weekend (26-28Sep14). Beyonce's sister was billed to hit the stage on Friday night (26Sep14) alongside the funk duo, Janelle Monae and 2 Chainz, but she has pulled the plug on her set due to "complications arising from a recent root canal".
Her slot on the bill will be filled by rapper Future.
The three-day Centennial Olympic Park festival will also feature performances from Kid Cudi, Childish Gambino, B.o.B, Killer Mike, and Bun B.
Outkast's Big Boi and Andre 3000 will appear every night.

20th Century Fox Film via Everett Collection
Here’s the thing about The Fault in Our Stars: you are most likely going to cry. Regardless of whether or not you actually enjoy the movie, or how invested you become in the star-crossed love story at its core, or even how stoic and cold-hearted you think you might be, you're probably going to end up like everyone else in the theater, bawling over the traumas of first love and the unfair tragedy of cancer. It's best to just accept that up front.
Based on John Green's best-selling novel, this tear-jerker centers on Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), a 16-year-old with a dark sense of humor about the disease that requires her to tote around an oxygen tank at all times. At the request of her parents, she attends a cancer survivor support group led by an overly religious, desperate-to-be-hip survivor (a hilarious Mike Birbiglia, who could have used a few more scenes) in a church basement. There, she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a handsome, charming boy who lost his leg to cancer. The two bond over some common interests – she shares her favorite novel An Imperial Affliction, he stays on the phone with her all night – and their steadfast refusal to allow anyone to treat them or their disease with kid gloves. And of course, they fall in love.
Like the film, they approach the disease with a twisted sense of humor, poking fun at everything from the group leader’s constant references to the “literal heart of Jesus,” their medication intake, and the most appropriate things to waste your wishes on. Despite being a movie about cancer, The Fault in Our Stars is surprisingly funny, with most of the laughs coming from their friend Isaac (an also underused Nat Wolff). It’s actually Isaac who feels the most like a real teenager, cycling rapidly through the stages of grief after his girlfriend dumps him right before a major surgery. The weight of the film, however, rests squarely on Woodley’s shoulders, and she does an excellent job as Hazel, balancing her sharp wit and sheer determination with the right amount of frailty and fear. Though she has enough magnetism and charm to make even the most pretentious, literary speeches sound somewhat natural, it’s the smaller moments where she really shines.
20th Century Fox Film via Everett Collection
Like his co-star, Elgort’s natural charm is an asset to the film, even if Augustus isn’t nearly as deeply realized as Hazel is. He’s a teenage dream of a boy – handsome, smart, and funny, with a tragic past, and the ability to win over everyone he encounters – and Elgort’s charisma and easy smile helps make some of his more pretentious quirks feel slightly more natural. His chemistry with Woodley is the strongest thing The Fault in Our Stars has on its side, and it’s hard to watch the way they light up in their scenes together and not root for Hazel and Gus’ love to triumph over all.
Fans of the novel will be thrilled that the film sticks so closely to the source material, although it does smooth over a lot of the issues present in the text. Though the most iconic lines and speeches are in tact, the streamlined narration cuts down on some of the more profound declarations that the characters make, allowing them to speak more like real people. Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber's determination to play up the characters' dark sense of humor also helps greatly, punctuating some of the more maudlin scenes with a much needed laugh. Still, it doesn’t all work. Hazel and Gus’ visit to the Anne Frank House gets a cloying voice-over, and it remains the worst possible place for the couple to share their first kiss. Interspersing the new dialogue with Green’s monologues can be clunky at times, and Gus’ metaphor probably works much better as a literary conceit than as something a real human being would do. And when the third act of the film pulls out all of the stops to ensure there isn’t a dry eye in the theater, the film lays on the sap a bit too thick in its treatment of its big tragedy.
But by that point in the film, after having bawled your way through half a bucket of popcorn and several tissues, it probably won't matter. Because that beautifully lit, perfectly soundtracked heartbreak is the selling point of Hazel and Gus' doomed love story, and precisely the appeal of any good cancer movie – and if the ruined mascara and muffled sobs are any indication, The Fault in Our Stars is a good one.
3.5/5
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ABC Television Network
The Middle has become one of the strongest sitcoms on TV and one of the main reasons is the likability of the Heck family. A lot of people probably see a good amount of themselves when watching the show.
The Hecks are... well... in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to sitcom families. They are definitely not as perfect as the Cosbys but they are far from being as morally repugnant as the Bundys. Sure, they may often be at each other's throats, particularly the teenage siblings Axl and Sue, but you never seem to get the sense that there's any true malice behind their fights. Even when one of them goes too far, there's always something that happens to reel one or both of them back in.
At first, Eden Sher might seem grating Sue, but her dorkiness becomes endearing. Charlie McDermott straddles the line of insufferable late-teen male brat, you know, the one who is totally self-absorbed but has glimmers of the good person he will grow to become.
I've been a huge fan of Neil Flynn since his days as the Janitor on Scrubs. It's nice seeing him play counter to the surly maintenance man, portraying an introvert who is still (mostly) devoted to his family. There are some days he would rather park himself in front of the television and tune everyone else out. Sure, he's still a curmudgeon, but at least Mike Heck won't drive anyone out to the desert and leave him there like the psychotic Janitor did with J.D. Flynn also allows Mike to show genuine moments of insight to filter their way through his irascible persona.
Patricia Heaton has been great as Frankie, a mother who is far from June Cleaver. she has admittedly ignored her kids and husband, though not to the point of where it is harmful. She is just overwhelmed by what life throws sometimes, but what makes me root for her is that she is self-aware and overall, she is a fantastic mother. She's a sublime comedy partner with Flynn.
Last, but not least, is the diminutive Brick, played by Atticus Shaffer. Brick could just be a punchline, just a young, stunted version of Sheldon Cooper, since both characters exhibit the same amount of social awkwardness. Brick has shown that he can peer through his fog of cluelessness and neuroses (I love how he sometimes lowers his head and whispers the last word of a sentence a second time). He comes across as a real person.
The guest stars are just right, with people like Jerry Van Dyke, Norm McDonald, and Kenneth Parcell lending their talents to the show without taking over. They feel like real relatives and bosses, not caricatures. Great casting all around.
I'm glad to sit down during the middle of my week to devote a half hour to watching the Hecks.
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Marvel/Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube
A wave of geek pride swept popular culture sometime in the latter half of the past decade — regrettably, long after many of us really needed it (damn those high school years). We've seen the phenomenon unfold in the form of Lucasfilm buzz, Star Trek reboots, and (most notably) the Marvel Universe on the big screen. Comic book devotees were not only seeing their favorite stories and characters take faithful shape in Disney's behemoth film franchise, but were sharing this love, for the first time, with everyone else. The mainstream.
As a subtle form of counterculture against an existing blockbuster fare so devoid of brains and heart that it bordered on nihilism, Hollywood grabbed for the passion that so many comic fans had been thriving on just below the scope of public awareness. Studios stumbled upon the pure gold that had been funding comic fandom for years, enlisting not those who might dilute the nerd lexicon with accessibility, but bona fide fluent-speakers to translate the language to the big screen: Joss Whedon, Matthew Vaughn, Joe Johnston, and the like. And the result wasn't an alienation of the American majority, but its integration with the flavorful subculture that had for so long offered shelter to those otherwise homeless. At last, being one of these long ostracized few was the key to popular authority. Encyclopedic knowledge about S.H.I.E.L.D., Asgard, and the Extremis virus became a bejewled anchor that'd dock you a coveted spot in any party conversation. Being a geek — historied, analytical, and didactic about these precious worlds — was finally in. So that would make it the perfect time to launch one of the Marvel Comics world's more obscure (at least compared to Iron Man) properties, Guardians of the Galaxy.
A film version of the Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning creation was first mentioned as a possibility back in 2010, ascending to the altogether surprising, exciting, and worrisome green light platform two years later, breaking public via an announcement at 2012's San Diego Comic-Con. We had only a few months prior seen The Avengers sock the American people with a regime of jingoistic solidarity that you'd ordinarily need a national tragedy to instill, but apprehensions remained: could Marvel Studios — yes, even that very Marvel Studios — get geeky enough for this wacko publication? But we might not have been asking the right question. A year and a half later, we have our first authentic taste of what the suits at Disney and their latest on-lot artisan James Gunn are offering with Guardians of the Galaxy. The trailer came forth via the good graces of Tuesday night's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (on the Mouse-handled network ABC), hitting the Internet moments later and eliciting every conceivable response from the Twittersphere: looks great, looks dumb, looks fun, looks weird, looks like magic, looks like trash, looks too... too...
"Geeky" wouldn't be the right word — far from it — though no one could claim that this seemed like your average blockbuster. Its hero, a sitcom star with a new vault-load of Lego Movie money (Chris Pratt), humorously laments the meager scale of his reputation and doles out the bird without reservation. Its second-in-commands are a cool-handed assassin (Zoe Saldana) and a shirtless bulge on a perpetual revenge quest (Dave Bautista). And then there's a raccoon and a tree (the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, respectively). A gallery of rejects, introduced by John C. Reilly and a disapproving Peter Serafinowicz all in perfect tempo with an action montage and the musical stylings of Blue Swede. It's all pretty f**king gosh darn ridiculous, as such bound to ordain contesters: the vein-deep geeks so rigidly affixed to the spirited but sincere masterworks of Stan Lee, the Avengers franchise fans confused by the apparent shift in the comic book movie machine's gears. But just as Phase I came about as an act of defiance to the stoic norm, Guardians seems to be speaking on behalf of its own breed of second-class citizen. A legion from the social culture underbelly with even less claim to fertile territory than the geeks had. This is the beginning of a new wave for dork culture.
Marvel/Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube
Call it semantics, but you'll just be proving how estranged you are from each locale (although despite what the message boards tell you, there's no shame in not being any kind of nerd). Where the geeks are proud members of a long oppressed and unappreciated kingdom, dorks are more "man without a country" types. Perhaps more accurately identified as schmoes, goons, oddballs, outcasts, dinks, freaks, or (if you want to stick with the classics) weirdos, those in the dork variety don't boast the benefits of a grounded underworld, nor a bible to which they might adhere. The dorks — proverbial loners — have only themselves. Their intellect, their sense of humor. Where many geeks stray to science fiction and fantasy, dorks stray to comedy, a medium as readily conducive to inward speculation and innovation as the comic book scene's is to outward. As such, with action and adventure laying claim to the most popular of the cinematic world's genres (and no traditionally unified voice, by nature), it's been hard for the dorks to really get their blockbuster out there. But Guardians of the Galaxy looks like it, in a number of ways.
First, this is a movie about dorks, not geeks. Although The Avengers saw a spat of dissimilar heroes coming together for the greater good, that central conceit is what identifies them as members of the geek class. Separately or together, they're all part of something larger than themselves: justice. An element that is often shunned and cast away by the powers that be, but that holds strong and electric beneath the surface until inevitably erupting with righteous power. In Guardians, we have a collection of criminals. Vandals, renegades, murderers. People (and aliens, and rodents, and trees) whose only unifying quality seems to be strength in numbers, or maybe just a distaste for the very idea of authority. That doesn't mean we won't root for 'em, but you can bet it won't be the same old band-of-brothers story that we saw back in May '12.
On the same token, not a one of them seems to belong anywhere. Again, we compare with the Avengers crew: Steve Rogers reigned supreme in the WWII-era American Army, Tony Stark was the Steve Jobs of his own electronics industry, Thor staked claim to a literal throne back in Asgard. But look at the Guardians: Drax the Destroyer (Bautista) lost his planet and family, Gamora (Saldana) abandons her evil upbringing in favor of an existential (albeit still quite violent) journey, nobody's heard of Peter "Star-Lord" Quill (Pratt), and... again, do we even have to say anything about the raccoon and the tree? As Serafinowicz harumphs in the trailer, this team doesn't come off as your motley band of underdog heroes. They look like "a bunch of a-holes." (Hey, maybe that's the new subculture that Guardians is aiming for.)
Marvel/Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube
Second, this is a movie for dorks. Not only is it championing the agenda of these walking, shooting, and tree-ing bags of nonsense, it's doing so with the attitude that a dork approaches his or her every thought with. Sure, The Avengers was funny — and irreverent, no doubt — but it was sincere. Genuine all the way through in everything it shepherded from source to script to screen. Guardians, as much as we can tell so far, is an explosion in goofiness. It introduces its central hero with a joke — not only at his expense, but at that of the movie itself. It undermines its own severity over and over, with cursing intergalactic agents, an eruption of '70s pop music, and a destruction of all the principles on which the ideas of traditional heroism are founded. Logically speaking, it doesn't seem like we're supposed to root for or believe in these dinguses. They don't have the inherent nobility of your geek heroes — the moral fiber that stems from a grounding in worlds of tribalistic fantasy. These guys are free agents, and the movie looks like it is embracing that in its delivery of character, story, ambiance, and comedy. And that last one is the most important indicator here. Geek culture is riddled with fun, but takes its staples very seriously. There's no room for that when you're talking about dorks.
So why now? Why is a dork movement on the rise as a counter to the very uprising that dissipated mainstream nihilism? Really, its a breakdown of subcultures altogether... or a step toward this notion. Geek culture came about to usher in a "different" group. Movies had long spoken to a specific populace, ignoring the creative, deserving, eager collections of comic book aficionados. Geek culture gave rise to the Second World. But dork culture is the Third World, or maybe no World at all. The dork wave is about true individualism. No adherence to any cultural law above survivalism. Where the geeks spent decades building speakeasy churches in which to decree their gods and psalms sanct — quietly, lest the ruling classes catch wind of this heresy — the dorks have been working corners for a bite to eat, not buying into the political reign or to the defiant uprisings. Not worrying about (or successfully abetting the demands of) what demanded of either the mainstream or the geeky, just looking for the things that made them laugh, feel, and think.
They haven't been looking for a band with which to take up — as if they'd be welcome into one if they had — reveling instead in inimitability... not without a healthy sum of self-loathing, mind you (again, damn those high school years). Throughout, they knew, or hoped, that they had something figured out. That someday, past the downfall of the mainstream, past the uprise of geek culture, they'd get to tell their story on the biggest screens imaginable. And it all starts here. Crank the ooga chakas.
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CBS Television Network
If you're one of the viewers that routinely switches off CBS as soon as Mike and Molly ends, well, shame on you: you're missing out on Mom. The freshman sitcom starring Anna Faris as a recovering alcoholic single mom who moves in with her also recovering mother, played by Allison Janney, holds enough of the audience on CBS' Monday night lineup that it will probably earn a second season, but that's not good enough. The show deserves more.
Faris has had an up-and-down career in the movies, but her emotional vulnerability and comedic timing has found a home on the sitcom. Her Christy, a waitress and AA regular, is hopeful and easy to root for as portrayed by the doe-eyed actress. Having a character that the audience can root for isn't always a given on a Chuck Lorre show, nor is having fully formed female characters... as anyone that's watched Melissa McCarthy descend into caricature on Mike and Molly can attest.
Janney, who's proven her chops in everything from The West Wing to Juno, provides even more incentive to watch. She infuses her Bonnie with a seen-it-all outlook that works perfectly for a character that's not as enamored of the sober lifestyle as her daughter is. More than that, Janney plays Bonnie as a real person, even when the writing is broad. She doesn’t work too hard for the laughs, but instead lets them come naturally, which helps temper the over-the-top elements that are a Lorre hallmark.
The show has also featured an enviable group of guest stars, starting with Kevin Pollak as Christy's long-absent father. The veteran comedian was the perfect choice to play off of the two leading ladies as a mensch who's trying to make things right. Justin Long, Mimi Kennedy, and Octavia Spencer have also put in appearances.
The show isn't perfect; the writers have yet to find a good rhythm for Christy's daughter, played by Saddie Calvano, and her boyfriend (Spencer Daniels). Additionally, Matt Jones and French Stewart, who play Christy's ex and boss respectively, seem like they might be more at home on Lorre's Two and a Half Men. While not everything might have jelled quite yet, the performances by the leads rises above any of the first year quibbles.
It's hard to play addiction recovery for both laughs and empathy, but Faris and Janney are doing a brilliant job of exactly that. Their efforts deserve to be rewarded with viewers that seek the show out as opposed to ones that just forget to change the channel after Mike and Molly.
Show Mom some love and you won't be disappointed.
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Vin Diesel/Facebook
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Post by Vin Diesel.
If we can learn anything from Miley’s tongue-lashing, no-clothes-wearing, twerk through 2013, it’s that celebrities have more media savvy than you’d think. Social media will make and break careers in the future. Viral videos have become the sex tapes of the 2010s. So it’s no surprise that a bizarre video Vin Diesel posted on his Facebook page has made him the talk of Hollywood.
To celebrate the early success of Riddick’s Blu-ray and DVD sales, Diesel decided to share a bit of a kooky video of him lip-synching “Dark Horse” by Katy Perry and Beyonce’s “Drunk in Love.” However, he randomly breaks into a frank business discussion after his own personal dance party. But the question is … what’s his thinking behind the video?
Diesel is the king of sequels. At first glance, Pitch Black and Fast &amp; The Furious didn’t seem like they would spawn even one let alone multiple sequels. However, Diesel hasn’t starred in a film that wasn’t a sequel for years. Is this video an attempt at Diesel angling for more attention? It worked for Miley. Could his suggestive dancing and halfhearted crotch grabs be an attempt to get on the cast of Magic Mike 2? His Jersey Shore-reminiscent dancing is better than some of the cast members (Adam Rodriguez, Alex Pettyfer) of the 2012 male-stripper drama. After all, that was a huge boost to Matthew McConaughey’s notoriety.
Maybe he’s practicing lip-synching for Fast &amp; Furious 7. Do the drag racers of the Fast &amp; Franchise meet drag queens? Is Diesel going to go undercover as Lynne Diesel, or better yet Miss Diesel Ann-Gin to infiltrate drug runners at a drag show? As implausible as that plot may be that would be an epic storyline! It'd also would be great brand integration with RuPaul's Drag Race Season 6.
Either way, Diesel is laughing all the way to the bank. He won the Internet with a video that included bizarre celebrity behavior, a reference to something topical (The Grammys) and a plug. Achievement Unlocked! Now an entire cross-section of people who haven’t been thinking about Diesel is having second thoughts.
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FX
Justified opened with a really nice tribute to the late Elmore Leonard, the author behind the whole show. Timothy Olyphant, who plays Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens, Walton Goggins, who plays Boyd Crowder, and creator Graham Yost all spoke highly of him.
The episode opened with Givens on the stand for a possible settlement case for Dewey Crowe (Damon Herriman). The main purpose of this scene was to once again gleefully show how stupid Crowe was. At one point, Givens pointed out "for the record, he thought he had four kidneys." The ultimate was when, after Crowe's lawyer threatened to have many other people talk about how rough Givens was in meting out justice and the defense decided to up the settlement to $300,000. Judge Mike Reardon (the always great Stephen Root) said, "In light of your situation, the state has decided to up it to 300." Crowe reared up and in righteous indignation, roared, "300? After all I have been through, I'm ONLY GETTING $300?!?!" In possibly the best deadpan voice ever, Reardon replied, "That's $300,000, you nitwit."
The scene shifted to Boyd in jail, talking to his fiancee, Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter) - she had been married to his brother - and saying that he would do whatever he would to free Ava, including threatening a judge's family. After parting ways, he went to a dope deal, only to find that Detroit was in free fall - they tried to stiff him, literally. He had to shoot three men, getting his ear badly wounded in the process. He called Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns) to tell him that the two of them were going to go to Detroit.
A quintessential Leonard scene happened next in Florida: Dilly Crowe (Jason Gray-Stanford) and Elvis Manuel Machado (Amaury Nolasco) paid a visit to a corrupt Coast Guard officer and Dilly wound up shooting him due to his making fun of his stutter. This was bad because the Coast Guard officer had been on the Federal watch list for taking bribes. This meant Art Mullen (Nick Searcy) wanted to send Givens to Florida to see the Crowes and also possibly see his baby daughter, since Winona (Natalie Zea), his estranged former wife, was also in Florida. Wanting no part of that, Givens sought a shortcut to stay in Kentucky and went to see Dewey at his new bar. He found him in a pool and after some back and forth with him and learning that Dewey had distanced himself from his clan, he shot the pool up on his way out just as a measure to keep tweaking Dewey.
Givens went to Florida and found that Machado was his target. He met a Florida task force and was driven around the area by Agent Sutter (David Koechner). Dilly met the senior Crowe, Darryl (Michael Rapaport). Darryl blew his top about hearing about the dead Coast Guard officer, since he knew that would spell trouble for his clan, since the Feds would come sniffing.
Boyd went to Detroit with Duffy to find out about his missing drug shipment, since he was going to need money to pay off whoever he needed to get Ava free. The two went to an abandoned building and had to climb 14 flights of stairs. What ensued was a truly surreal scene. They found Picker (John Kapelos), who he had had dealings with in the previous season. There was a bunch of severed mannequins and a man with a chainsaw in another room, torturing someone. Sammy Tonin (Max Perlich) was there too, but Picker soon disposed of him and the chainsaw guy (Boyd and Duffy were spattered with Tonin's blood, with both of them being too impossibly cool about it). It turned out he had aligned himself with the Canadian mob and was going to kill Boyd and Duffy as well, but Boyd turned the tables on him by hitting him with the briefcase. The three of them met the Canadian connections, played by Will Sasso and David Foley, continuing the show's tradition of bringing in comedic actors to play serious roles. The Canadians were backing out ("I thought all Canadians were supposed to be nice?" "Wrong Canadians."). This meant that they would have to find other avenues. Picker suggested Mexico.
In Florida, things didn't go well for Givens either. First he and Sutter met Jean-Baptiste (Edi Gathegi), who called Darryl right after he left. Darryl was then flying down the Everglades on an airboat, where he sent his sister, Wendy (Alicia Witt), a paralegal, to meet with the two law enforcement officers. He agreed to have them get Machado, so that he wouldn't violate his parole. Darryl went back to his place and told Machado his services were no longer needed and that he would meet him at a hotel with his last payment. Machado went with Wendy to go to the hotel. The tricky part was Dilly. In a cold-blooded move, Darryl had his brother Danny stab him, since Darryl figured that he would be too stupid if he had to talk to the Feds.
Machado, who figured he had been set up, tried to thwart the plan by taking Wendy at gunpoint, but the Crowe sister, while having gone legit, was still more than capable of thinking on her feet. She purposely got into an accident and fled the scene while Machado stumbled off. She called Givens, who was at the hotel finding that Machado wasn't there. She told him that Machado was fleeing to Cuba. Givens and Sutter found Machado on a motorized raft, trying to leave. When they told him he could either A) Bring the raft back and they arrest him or B) Try to swim to Cuba, Machado chose C) Get pumped full of lead by the two officers when he tried to draw on them.
Givens headed back to Kentucky after Sutter told him how hard it was to have to leave his kids when he saw them on his visitation days. Givens didn't even want to deal with that, electing to have a Skype conversation with Winona.
The episode closed with Boyd visiting the home of Lee Paxon (Sam Anderson), the man he most despised - a powerful man who he had humiliated last season, but who now had the upper hand. After Paxton wanted him to grovel and sneered that he wouldn't do that even to save his "white-trash" fiancee, Boyd caved his head in and then paid off Paxton's new Latvian wife to keep quiet. Boyd the Animal had resurfaced.
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CBS Films
Getting the likes of Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, and Kevin Kline in one film should be a recipe for a rousing success, and in many ways throughout Last Vegas, the casting is very successful. The main cast gives everything actors can really contribute to a film, and they excel as well as they can with what they're given. But the film shows that, at the end of the day, the script is king, and Last Vegas falters because its dreadfully weak writing hinders some fun performances.
Like another Vegas comedy, to which comparisons are unavoidable, the film centers around a bachelor party. Billy (Douglas) is trying to hold onto his youth with the grip of an iron vice. He's engaged to a much younger woman and decides that his wedding is the perfect time to rekindle his relationship with his three best friends, a group friendship that has frayed over the years. Archie (Freeman), Paddy (De Niro) and Sam (Kline) pack up to experience a weekend full of geriatric high jinks before Billy's wedding. Each of the four characters travels to Vegas with a certain amount of baggage stowed away in the carry-on compartment, and it's all related to aging, but the resolution to all of these character threads ends way too predictably. The first resolution to each of their stories that swirls around in your head while watching will undoubtedly be the one that pops up on screen before the credits roll.
One of the biggest sins Last Vegas makes is that it's just not all that funny, and the problem lies in the script. The film seems content with telling the same joke about old people over and over again, ad nauseam. It can barely mine humor from any other source besides the characters' advanced ages, pounding that theme into your head like a pulsing jackhammer. Jokes are fired at a machine gun pace, but so many of them fall ridiculously flat. Even when the cast is able to sell some of the feeble punchlines, they still aren't very clever or memorable. If anything, it makes it clear to see why these actors are as celebrated as they are. They all posses a serious amount of charm that bounces across the screen and makes the duds clank a little less loudly.
CBS Films
In fact, any enjoyment to be had from Last Vegas stems solely from the performances of the principal men, and sultry lounge singer Diana (Mary Steenburgen). All five actors possess a natural chemistry that carries the film's limp material around long after the script has forgotten how to be clever. They all have an excitable energy that permeates the rest of the film, but energy means little when they aren't saying anything particularly interesting. During the film, you're never quite bored or offended, but you're never excited either. It just chugs along in a miasma of general competence but not much else.
Last Vegas isn't quite dead on arrival but it's no a spring chicken either. Its high points ride on the backs of its stars' finely aged charisma, and much of the pleasing aspects that exist in Last Vegas would still be intact if the film just consisted of the actors sitting in a room, chewing the fat with each other without a script or direction. At the very least, they would have fewer stupid things to say. What happened in Vegas probably should have stayed there.
2/5
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Nickelodeon
It’s almost Halloween, which means that it’s time for lists upon lists of the spookiest and scariest television shows ever made. But there’s one show that traumatized more children than any other: Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark. From 1990-2000, kids everywhere tuned in to hear the Midnight Society tell the scariest stories they could come up with, and often found out that the answer to the titular question was “yes, now please turn on the light."
In honor of Halloween and the scariest show to ever grace television screens, we (Casey Rackham and Julia Emmanuele) are listing out the episodes that personally terrified us as children, and still give us the creeps.
Julia's Picks, ranked from "OMG" to "I’m Never Gonna Sleep Again":
"The Tale of Many Faces"The show was not particularly well known for its special effects, but this episode would not be nearly as scary if they weren’t so good. The story goes that Emma, an aspiring model, goes to work as an intern for Madam Visage, a former theater actress. However, it turns out that Madame Visage is stealing the faces of pretty girls to wear on her own head, and keeping them in her stately home dressed in robes and masks. This episode is definitely one of the creepiest things I have ever watched, and to this day I am still freaked out by the weird featureless masks the girls wear. And it always bothered me that Madame Visage was able to hold almost a hundred girls hostage, and nobody came looking for them. Surely there are enough weird things happening at that house that someone would have called the police long before Emma even arrived.
"The Tale of the Crimson Clown"This episode combined my twin fears of clowns and possessed dolls in a tale about a boy being attacked by a possessed clown doll after stealing money from his brother. The doll itself is terrifying enough, but what really made the Crimson Clown scary was the demonic, high-pitched voice and weird, wheezing laugh. It’s the kind of episode that makes you wonder if the writers wanted to scare their children into behaving, as the threat of a possessed clown doll grabbing you with its weird ribbon arms is enough to get any child to change their attitude. Thanks to Are You Afraid of the Dark, I’ve spent most of my life being wary of strange dolls, as this episode hammered home the idea that they’re all inhabited by demons.
"The Tale of the Midnight Madness"In this story, Dr. Vink, Are You Afraid of the Dark’s favorite villain, saves a failing movie theater by selling a 1922 edition of Nosferatu in exchange for the theater manager allowing him to show his films once a week. But the manager doesn’t honor his contract and so the original vampire himself comes to life and starts terrorizing the theater. It may not have been as traumatizing as some of the other episodes, but the scene where Nosferatu menacingly makes his way toward the unsuspecting kid working in the projection booth was almost as suspenseful as a Hitchcock film. This episode was the reason that I always checked behind me whenever I had to walk up stairs in the dark, and why I was wary of movie theaters at night for years afterward. It’s the perfect episode to watch in a dark room, as the building suspense made me jump at every noise and shadow when I was a kid.
"The Tale of the Ghastly Grinner"The Ghastly Grinner is a comic book villain who comes to life when Ethan attempts to dry off his comic book in the microwave. The premise is pretty ridiculous, but once the bus driver’s head spun around and he started drooling blue goo, things got a lot scarier. The scariest part of the episode, by far, is the Ghastly Grinner himself, who looks like a slightly unhinged serial killer that works at a Renaissance Fair. Plus, he never seems to blink, which only adds to the terror, because it felt a bit like he could see into people’s souls. Every time the Grinner popped out from behind someone, I screamed my little head off, and, like with so many other episodes, his scary, maniacal laugh haunted me for several sleepless nights.
"The Tale of Laughing in the Dark"Are You Afraid of the Dark set the bar for terrifying children impossibly high with only its second episode. Even if you don’t already have a fear of clowns, there’s no denying that this is one of, if not the scariest episode of all. The tale is about Josh, who decides to prove that a carnival isn’t haunted by stealing the nose from the statue of Zeebo the Clown. Zeebo died in a fire in the Great Depression, and did indeed haunt the carnival thereafter, which Josh found out the hard way. This is the kind of episode that crosses the line from scary to traumatizing, and Zeebo barely even had to appear in it to ruin carnivals and funhouses for me forever. This is another episode which resulted in me jumping every time I heard a noise in my house, and the combination of Zeebo’s laugh and the creepy funfair music kept me awake for a long time after I watched it. I’m still not completely over this episode, and while I can watch many of the tales that scared me as a child now and laugh, there will probably always be a tiny part of me that’s terrified of Zeebo the Clown.
Casey's Picks, ranked from "I Don't Like This at All" to "I'm Never Leaving My House Again":
"The Tale of the Water Demons"Lesson learned: “Don’t mess with the dead, and no matter what you do… don’t mess with their stuff.” In “The Tale of the Water Demons,” two cousins and an old man are haunted by the ghosts of drowned ship passengers who were robbed by the old man. The episode effectively made me completely terrified of going anywhere near fishing docks, because without a doubt, water demons cloaked in seaweed will try to drown you in the depths of unknown waters. Also, I'm never going to steal from dead people.
"The Tale of the Shiny Red Bicycle"So in this episode, a boy named Mike is so overwrought with guilt for not being able to save his friend Ricky from falling off of a bridge that he’s haunted by the ghost of Ricky (talk about deep, psychological issues). While this episode isn’t necessarily one of the scariest of the bunch, it definitely made me feel sick to my stomach when I watched it. Poor Mike clearly needed serious help getting over his friend’s death and no one was there to comfort him. Leave it to Are You Afraid of the Dark to teach us about life through the use of ghosts.
"The Tale of Lonely Ghost"First of all, the real-life related premise is nightmare worthy in its own right: A girl (Amanda) desperately wants to be friends with her bratty cousin (who is seriously awful) and her group of friends, and lets them torment her so she can be a part of their gang. (Teenage girls, you suck.) But things get even worse when Amanda is forced to spend a night in a haunted house and comes face to face with the mute ghost who died there, and who apparently lives in a mirror on the wall. Worse yet, it turns out the ghost is Amanda’s grandmother’s daughter (aka Amanda’s aunt). In the end, the ghost and Amanda’s grandmother go through the mirror and live there together for forever. The fact that there is the potential of an alternate reality in mirrors that ghosts can suck you into is just plain creepy. I'll tell you one thing: I'll never want friends badly enough to put myself through that horror.
"The Tale of the Doll Maker"Everyone raise your hand if one of your worst fears is being turned into a porcelain doll and getting trapped inside of a doll house. Okay, good -- I’m not the only one. In “The Tale of the Doll Maker,” a young girl goes to visit her friend only to find that she’s been trapped inside of a haunted doll house. After seeing this episode, I could never look at the doll house that my grandpa had built me the same way. What if my dolls were real people who were forever stuck in a doll’s body? No thank you.
"The Tale of the Dead Man’s Float"So I’m not embarrassed to admit it, this episode is the root of one of my lifelong fears: the drain at the bottom of pools. Let’s just talk about this for a second. A geeky boy and a popular-but-secretly-nice girl hangout in an inflatable boat in their school’s pool, you know normal teenager stuff. But then, it’s revealed that one of the most terrifying looking monsters -- it resembles a mop soaked in blood -- haunts the pool and attempts to drown people who swim in it. I mean, come on. What kid isn’t going to be completely terrified of going for a swim. To this day, I can’t be alone in a pool because, unless someone can prove otherwise, there is definitely a ghost in the drain waiting to grab onto my ankle and kill me. You think I’m joking, but I’m not.
So thank you, AYAOTD. You have successfully scared and scarred the children of the ‘90s for life. Are you happy with yourself?
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In the moments between that one last Executive Producer: Vince Gilligan and a frenetic phone call from my college roommate, I struggled with the uncertainty that hits some of us after experiencing anything as grand as the Breaking Bad series finale: Was that — could it possibly have been — as perfect as I thought it was? Would everybody else in the world feel the same way, or would this be the Lost finale debacle all over again? (Hey, Walt did leave us in a pose quite reminiscent of Jack Shephard's final bow.) But then I got the call. I logged onto Twitter. I caught a few moments of glee emanated by the Talking Bad panel. I knew that this wasn't all stemming from my will to leave this program on a high note. This was real. The Breaking Bad finale was, unequivocally, perfect.
Perfect in its pacing. We got the big blow-out episode two weeks back, when Hank and Gomey bit the dust, Walt kidnapped baby Holly, and a border collie scampered across the New Mexican highway. While the world anticipated a Walt Vs. The Nazis showdown in this final chapter, that was really just the capper: the meat of the episode was the deliberate, somber cobblestone pathway leading up to that explosive end. The drama that booms inside of Breaking Bad, not the thriller that coats its outer shell.
At first, "Felina" made some of us hesitant to believe that it would accomplish everything it needed to. After a menacing stop at the Schwartz household and a quick visit with Lydia and Todd, we might have wondered if the show was delivering its final episode in a form that felt too much like a staccato bucket list. But we were validated in our hopes that the ep would soften its edges. Once Walt hit Skyler's depressing new pad, paying a visit with the secondary intentions of leaving her with the tangible evidence capable of freeing her from the law's grasp once and for all and the primary intentions of bidding one last goodbye to his wife and infant daughter (and, through a tear-stained window, his son — so shattered by his father's villainies that he has abandoned one of their most symbolic kinships: driving), the episode evened out to a steady flow that not only proved unconditionally captivating, but also retroactively acknowledged all that came before it to have been so mechanically necessary.
From that point on, we came to realize that the first half of the episode (jeez, we're already more than halfway done!) was spotted with perfection. We were sold on the grimacing opener — Walt shivering in the snowed-in car he steals up in New Hampshire, praying to a God who has no business paying him any mind and ultimately receiving the bounty for which he asks: the keys to the ride takes across country, stopping first at the Schwartz's place to put the fear of death into them in return for Elliott's boneless agreement to transfer Walt's nine million smackers to Walt Jr. upon his 18th birthday. The whole scene — a break-in that Danny Ocean would treat to an impressed nod — plays with the cinematic poise and aggressive suspension of disbelief you might find in a Hollywood heist flick. Walt, reproducing some amalgamation of Heisenberg, Mike Ehrmantraut, and the dapper leading antiheroes in whatever movies he asked Robert Forster to pick up for him during his time in the mountains, recognizes just what sort of folk he's dealing with this time around: his sort of folk. Not the hardened Salemancas or sociopathic neo-Nazis that see straight through his falsified bravado, but the kind of people he can so faintly remember being. So, he can take this one final opportunity to tout the character he has built... sans hat, but close enough.
And to concede that this scene isn't at all a deviation from the Breaking Bad universe but very much just a machination of Walt's toxic drives paying off in the only sort of community they ever really might, we find out that the two "expert hit men" he hired to shine sniper rifels into the chests of his Prague-going victims are none other than Badger and Skinny Pete. Here is a sign of the depths to which present day Walt, with millions in tow, has sunk. And just as importantly, it is a sign of series creator/episode writer and director Vince Gilligan's appreciation for his fan base. There might have been plenty of ways to convey that Walt had no intention, or means, of actually harming Elliott and Gretchen. And a dozen and a half, easy, of Walt solidifying the realization that Jesse was still at large. But none would have been more crowd pleasing. More fun for the long-time viewers. Here's one for the fans, Vince Gilligan must have smiled while writing these scene. Proof that even in its darkest, bleakest attire, Breaking Bad is not intrinsically joyless.
On, past quick shots of Walt parading through diners, his broken down old home on Negra Arroyo, and glaring ominously into his trunk, to his next victim: Lydia. A predictable sort (and predictably one, at that), Walt is able to determine the time and place of Lydia's next meeting with Todd as well as exactly what she'll be drinking at the time. The sort of beverage into which a cigarette's worth of ricin might find itself dumped during a frantic ad hoc meeting (a meeting that also gives Walt the opportunity to get a leg in to a reunion with Todd's dirtbag brethren. All in one stone. And although this scene isn't likely to stay with us the way that Walt's tyrannical traipse through the Schwartz home, his miserably poetic sit-down with Skyler, or any of what comes thereafter will, it is a point we needed to visit, and of which to watch the undertaking with a cautious and hungry eye. Walt is lucky, yes (very), but he's also quite good at much of what he does.
In a quick break from Walt, we see the Lambert sisters taking to their pre-series dynamic: high on the leverage her noble tragedy gives her over the decrepit narrative worn by her sister, Marie phones Skyler to play a condescending (never vindictive, just inherently competitive) guardian, letting her know that Walt has been spotted back inthe neighborhood, and that she best be on the lookout — because we're lucky enough to be watching Breaking Bad, it is immediately after this phone call that we realize Walt is already in the picture. When he does finally say his goodbyes to Skyler, to baby Holly, and (tacitly) to Flynn, Walt allows us something we haven't experienced in full seasons: he impresses us. Walt comes clean to himself, using Skyler as the push, that he didn't do any of this for anybody but himself. Cooking meth, ascending to the top of the kingdom, it was all to be something he never got a chance to be. To grab at the missed opportunities that have haunted him through every car cleaning and every ungrateful high school student. He needed to feel like the man he never was. And all the decay he has come to discover, and to endure, has finally made Walt open his eyes to that.
It is the first time of several in this final episode that Walt shows us something in him that we can reflect upon as sympathetic. We'll never root for him again. We'll never give him the benefit of the doubt. But we can grow wistful over shines of the man he once was. In Walt's exchange with Skyler, we see that old Walt in him again... we hold onto memories of a Walt we can remember loving. In Flynn's defeated, physically weakened trodding from bus to front door, we see an abandonment of the Walt we might ever have rooted for. And in Walt's stroking of the hairless head of a sleeping baby Holly, we see the hero, and father, he never got the chance to be. Worse even than the crumbling Skyler and altogether abdicated Flynn, we see a daughter who won't remember him at all. But he'd hang onto her, and this moment, even if he lasted another five seasons.
AMC
And then comes the boom. Walt's endeavor toward justice. We're not certain where he stands on objective, at this point. Is he just trying to reclaim his throne? Is he vying for the rest of his money, with which to shower a resentful Walt Jr.? Revenge for Hank? Freedom for Jesse? Some kind of principled takedown of the White Power movement? Or maybe, in the simplest and possibly most gratifying terms, a scientist driven to carry out a calculated plan?
Walt is ushered through the team's gates, salivating with anticipation over his opportunity to let loose his machine gun-rigged automobile. The simplest and most foreseeable of problems takes hold immediately: they snag his car keys (the weapon is operated by the unlock plooper thing — for the life of me, I have no idea what else you'd call those gadgets, and my father always used the word "plooper"). And then, a larger problem: Uncle Jack wants Walt dead. Why, exactly? Eh, who knows? He's a menace. He's a threat. He's a jackass. Take your pick. But Uncle Jack, that same Uncle Jack who so graciously gave Walt a barrel of his own dough, will not be called a liar when Walt accuses him of partnering up with Jesse Pinkman to create the blue meth that is selling hot throughout Europe these days. So, Uncle Jack parades the shackled Jesse out into the open for Walt to gaze upon. Not a partner, but a slave.
We can assume that Walt's agitation of Jack was only to bide time while he squirms for his key plooper on the fleetingly guarded pool table, and that Walt had no real intention of seeing Jesse again — at least at this particular juncture — or using him as a pawn in his plan to take down the nazi troupe. But a monkey wrench in thrown into the gears when Todd drags Jesse into the line of Mr. White's sights, and the man who just gave the wife he destroyed one last look at the good that lurks someplace inside of him surprises us yet again: he looks at Aaron Paul, but doesn't see Jesse. He doesn't see the loud-mouthed, bright-eyed, beaming idiot with a heart of gold that came under his tutilege back in the days of the desert. He sees what is left of that scrappy young pup, and feels something — call it guilt or responsibility, maybe just pity, or (if you are an idealist, like I am) a flicker of love. Corroded love. But in taking one look at the boy whose name he cried out during his painkiller soliloquy, Walt sees someone else he cares to rescue. A tackle to the ground, a quick press of the plooper (sorry if that's robbing the summary of its gravity) button, and the guns howl with fury, taking out — in a twist of fate so romantically gratifying that you're not going to call it out for being "too convenient" — every one of the low-down bastards but Todd and Uncle Jack.
Todd is left to Jesse, who strangles the monster with the very shackles in which he placed him. That's elementary poetic justice. But then Walt enacts perhaps the most surprising move we get ever in the show: he cuts Jack off, with a bullet to the head, right in the midst of a threat that he'll never know how to find the rest of his millions. That unapologetic decision tells us that this whole endeavor was not for the money, nor even for the pride. It was for freedom. It was his goodbye to this world, on the part of his trembling family and — a priority that came into being as soon as he laid sad eyes onto him — Jesse.
To articulate the currents that erupt between Walt and Jesse in their final moments together would be a task I'm not equipped to take. Walt allows Jesse the opportunity to kill him; hell, Walt allows himself the opportunity to be killed, to be put out of his demonic misery, by his proverbial son. But Jesse — wanting so badly for Walt to be out of the picture, refusing so resentfully to do him any last favors, and so painfully unable despite everything and anything else to take the life of someone who has (for better or much, much, MUCH worse) been so very important to him — can't. Won't. Doesn't. "Do it yourself," Jesse tells Walt.
In discussing the scene to follow with a few friends post-viewing, I recognize it as that which will be called out as the finale's only weak link: Walt's phone conversation with Lydia. On the one hand, we don't need to hear him tell her that she's dying, as we already know. And she, soon enough, will know. But this call isn't for us, for Walt, or for Lydia. It's for Jesse, for whose benefit Walt speaks in hearty exposition just before the tattered young man can make his way out of the incarcerating gate. Jesse needs to know that he's free. That this world to which he has been bound so mercilessly since pre-Day 1 is under the ground. Walt has plucked every major player from the meth game, topping off the list with Lydia, thusly ending Jesse's ties to this cold, chemical, blue hell. And with Jesse taking note of Walt's abolition of him, he might even set Walt free, too: of the hate. Whether or not he still holds onto the very real anger he must feel for the latest father figure to abandon him, Jesse offers Walt one final glance of sincerity. A "thanks for the memories," or a "it's been real"? Maybe. Probably, if only just a bit. It might be asking too much to think that the find, wordless stare shared by the men is anything close to the love or fraternity we always sort of wanted to believe they shared. But it's certainly civility. And, if that's not enough to make you tear up a little, it's shared history. And then, it's a goodbye.
The most wonderful goodbye we'll say to any Breaking Bad character, as Jesse speeds dynamically through the gate he tried to scale one episode and so many months before, laughing like the child he never got to be not only at his freedom from his underground cage, but from the pen in which Walter White has kept him for the past two years. Killing Walt, or seeing Walt put in jail, might never have given Jesse the ease he feels in this beautiful instance. A true understanding and trust, despite everything, that the man who has controlled his life has decided once and for all to let him go. And then once he flips on that engine, Jesse's life is, for the first time in the series, his. He belongs to himself alone. And he's off to do whatever he might wish — build boxes, draw cartoons, flee to Alaska, take care of Brock. Tying everything up so neatly, the show lets our imaginations run wild. Breaking Bad says, "Give Jesse the ending you've always wanted for him." And that's not only okay, it's perfect. Jesse, now, can have any ending he wants. And we love him. So let's all give him the one we love best.
Note: And yes, in the cold light of morning, I understand the frivolity in deeming Jesse's ending a "happy" one. Sure, he is free now in a tangible sense, and ostensibly able to escape hold of the trade for his days to come, but this is the same young man of pulverized heart and spirit that we saw lifelessly opt to flee to Alaska not so long ago. Actually, it's a man worse for wear, now that Andrea has been killed right before his eyes. Jesse will never be free, not from all that has been tattooed onto his soul thanks to the legacy of Walter White. Holly might not remember him, but Jesse won't go a moment without Walt's claws piercing him so viciously. It's a given that Jesse's life won't be perfect, and might never be "good." But I do think we can latch onto that unadulterated relief we see in him in that final second. That momentary glee. The ability to feel something in the neighborhood of hope again. I think that's a happy enough ending, and that we can have fun determining for ourselves in what way it will manifest.
And as for Walt... his ending is quite clear. As he steps with the chemist's awe into the nazis' meth lab, glowing over the machinery that gave him the torrential past two years, Walt is happy to hold fast to every twinge and twitter that he has know in this tour. He has come to a point to realize that his reasons for getting into the game were all sour, that his actions were all missteps, that everything he has done to his family and friends has been nothing short of satanic. But he has not forgotten any of the other side of it: having known all that, to some degree, this entire time, there was a reason he kept going. Everything he explained to Skyler — the feeling that he was finally what he wanted to be. A king, a hero, a man, a winner. At the expense of his wife and children, his in-laws, friends, coworkers, and of Jesse, Walt gave himself life.
It's a sad, terrible, monstrous, tragic story. But it's a human one. And as the cops flood in and we Walt fall bloody to a Jack Shephardian death, weakened by a nick from one of his own bullets and long torn down by the disease brewing inside of him, finally ready to let go after settling everything on the outside and inside alike, we recognize the human inside of Walt. We don't forgive it. We don't entirely sympathize with it. We can't say we love or root for it whatsoever. But we see it — him. We see a man. And for all he's done to everyone around him — and to us as well — we'll sure miss his story.
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